Hazy knowledge and inexperience added to an intuition that politics was manipulated by mysterious forces. Suspicion was often transmitted down through the generations by adages like “All politicians are thieves,” “The squeaky wheel gets the grease,” and “One hand washes the other.” The penchant for projective thinking was evident in the fluency with which Italian Americans resorted to conspiracy as a means of explaining events. A leader in the Italian-American Civil Rights League offered a grandiose version. “There’s a conspiracy against Italian Americans, because we really are a majority of Americans. There are thirty-three million of us, although the census is afraid to admit it. That is why the CIA shot Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Joe Colombo. It was because Colombo was trying to unite the have-nots against the haves. The CIA did it because Joe Colombo would have upset the two-party system.”

Jonathan Rieder, Carnasie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn Against Liberalism. FYI, this is who Joe Colombo is.
(via antoine-roquentin)